Article · 8 min read

How Much Equity to Give Your First Employees: The Real Data from 50,000 Startups

Jason Lemkin · SaaStr Free Beginner

This is the empirical spine for the employee half of your answer, built on Carta data from 50,000 real cap tables, not opinion. It shows equity drops fast: hire #1 sits around 1.5% at median (0.5% to 4% range), hire #2 at 0.85%, hire #3 already near 0.5%. That anchors your 0.5% to 2% call for a genuinely early, critical below-market hire and tells you exactly how fast to shrink grants as you keep hiring.

• Median first-hire grant is about 1.5%, but the honest working range is 0.5% to 4% depending on how early and how critical
• Each subsequent hire drops 20% to 50%: by hire #3 you are usually below 1%
• Every grant assumes 4-year vesting with a 1-year cliff, which is non-negotiable market standard, not a nicety